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"Spam King" Pleads Guilty in U.S. Federal Court
Monty writes "It looks like 'Spam King' Adam Vitale has finally plead guilty to violation of the CAN-SPAM Act of 2003 in federal court in New York City. 'The indictment said that in less than a week in August 2005, Vitale and Moeller sent e-mails on behalf of the informant to more than 1,277,000 addresses of subscribers at AOL, the online division of Time Warner Inc. Vitale will be sentenced on September 13 when he faces a maximum sentence of 11 years in prison. Moeller, who lives in New Jersey, faces the same charge.' We discussed Vitale's arrest back in February."
So he was guilty. Given the amount of money he amassed spamming, my guess would be he gets 1 year at most and then some probation. Money makes the judicial system go round in this country.
1,277,000 addresses of subscribers at AOL ... faces a maximum sentence of 11 years in prison
Maximum of five minutes in prison for each of the people he spammed. Seems a little light.
Stop-Prism.org: Opt Out of Surveillance
Has anyone ever been accused of spamming who wasn't described as "the Spam King"? The UCE world sounds like medieval Europe, where everyone with a castle and a few horses was the King of Whateveritania.
What I'm listening to now on Pandora...
Now is someone going to arrest the guys who send my junk mail with fake little credit cards in them, or whoever has a machine call up to tell me I have a cheap vacation waiting for me? Why is that fine, but this guy goes to jail for doing the same thing via a different medium?
Why would we jail someone for spamming? They are non-violent offenders. Now, after forcing us to waste our time dealing with spam, we get the additional opportunity to pay for his housing for up to 11 years. I think we should place non-violent offenders under house arrest and have them work to undo the damage they did. Maybe have him spend several years identifying spam or doing community service.
This jailing of people for computer crimes that did not cause physical injury and do not present a continuing danger is ridiculous. Take the money they made illegally away and then have them do something to make it up to the community while on probation. Now, if they make a second attempt and get convicted again at whatever they were convicted of originally... then let's reestablish public gallows and hang them, then mount their head on a spike somewhere preferably near a webcam. The point is, either way, they don't go to prison and we save money.
In serious, this whole idea of throwing people in jail for things they did on a computer (including copyright violations) that didn't result in someone being bodily harmed or killed is totally out of proportion and a short-sighted way of dealing with the problem. You can beat the living crap out of someone, enough to give them some minor form of permanent disability for the rest of their life, and get a year in most states - and that's the maximum, which will only be applied if you are a chronic repeat offender.
Anyone who has ever had to swap a hard-drive out of a mailserver due to increased wear or disk space requirements, or upgrade a data pipe to the next size up, has been financially harmed by spammers. And if you slipped with the screwdriver and injured yourself while undertaking this otherwise unnecessary work.... It is not the victimless crime that supporters of spam like to make out.
That deserves to be punished.
Paul "Say no to feeping creaturism"
Fine, he goes to jail. But in the meantime, he's probably sold millions of e-mail addresses to other spammers, because people trusted CAN-SPAM and clicked on the "unsubscribe" link.
The problem with CAN-SPAM is that it's a reactive measure. While allowing spammers to collect your e-mail addresses, the government is feeding the beast they're supposed to kill in the first place.
Prisons aren't meant to rehabilitate, they are meant to punish. Like AlcAnon Members know, you can only rehabilitate yourself, no one can do it for you. Prison should be a shitty place so that people who end up their want to reform their ways.
-You have been modded appropriately-
I've heard many people refer to prison as "criminal college" and I believe it. Junk email sucks, but we're not doing ourselves any favors if this guy comes out of jail ready to rape and pillage.
In terms of rehabilitation I can think of many jobs they could have criminals perform as an alternative to being locked up. Certainly some form of community service or even choosing to serve the country in the military in place of their sentence not only has the potential of serving the public but also making them into a better person by the time they're done serving their time. Of course these options should be available on a case by case basis.
... just some thoughts
Collector's Edition
have I missed something here
Yes.
It's not like he's committed a violent crime or put people out of work.
This plague costs the economy billions in lost productivity, otherwise unecessary system capacity expenses... do you REALLY think that a company looking to grow and compete and hire/retain the best people at whatever they do wouldn't rather spend all of that time and energy on things directly relevent to what they DO for a living? Huge expenses - otherwise unrelated to a business's actual line of work - absolutely DO cost jobs. How many schools could better spend that money on lower tuitions or newer labs? Just think it through.
But wouldn't a far more appropriate response be to seize his assets and slap him with fines amounting to the damage he's caused?
The damage he's caused involves WAY more money than what he's collected. That he's willing to cause that sort of damage should tell you everything you need to know about the guy. He wants someone else's money, and is willing to cause damage and participate in fraud to get it. It's not very different than committing insurance fraud for cash... and then watching the rest of us pay higher premiums to cover it.
More to the point, though: he's already demonstrated a willingness to knowingly break the law and abuse other people's systems and networks. Physically stopping him from doing it again by locking him up is the only way you'll prevent him from just putting on another hat/identity and doing it again, more carefully, through a surrogate. Or "consulting" for someone else who does. What do you think he'll do at night after he clocks out of the community service work you'd rather he was doing? Hopping online somewhere, or talking someone else through doing so, and doing something he knows will generate some cash.
Don't disappoint your bird dog. Go to the range.
I mean, the punishment seems a little excessive.
OK I'll bite, what punishment? He hasn't been sentenced yet that doesn't happen until September 13. For maximum sentences to be doled out, the convict has to either "be an example" or have a whole bunch of things working against them (related crimes, etc). So he's probably not getting the maximum sentence.
Next you say: I am not defending him. and then follow it up with several questions that undermine any form of harsh sentencing by using subtly applying your own value judgements inside of the very questions you want us to investigate. Your questions are practically rhetorical, not even questions really. And then you throw up this line: This is just as ridiculous as an SA who once worked for a p2p service getting jail time. without even bothering to provide a supporting link or two.
Just because you can't see the impact of these "relatively innocous crimes" doesn't mean that they aren't costing millions of dollars of resources. I understand that the digital world can be hard to fathom, so take something real. Imagine that a tire company paid a group of people (call them a gang) to slash tires in parking lots. Now imagine that it wasn't just a few tires, picture that EVERY DAY this gang of individuals slashed tires on 5 or 10% of the parked cars. And what if the problem escalates? Now people are hiring parking lot security just to make sure that their tires aren't being slashed. But the gangs are creative they come up with "slashing guns" and group diversionary tactics and various other means.
Now clearly, this is relatively innocuous and it won't result in loss of life b/c you can't leave the lot with no air. So what type of prison sentence do you dole out? I mean all they did was slash tires every day for 5 years. Mostly, they just wasted people's time and cost people of bunch of money (new tires and security guards).
If you've ever paid for tires or had your tires slashed, these arguments all sound pretty weak, and they are. Just b/c this whole spam thing happens digitally doesn't mean that it doesn't cost millions of dollars and tons of effort, it just means that you're not seeing it, b/c that cost is on your monthly ISP's bills or extra overhead for your company. You've off-loaded the costs to someone else (the parking lot security) and now you're forgetting what it was like when you could just park your car.
Say I fraud you out of your entire life savings. I haven't physically harmed you either, but your life is totally devastated... What should be the punishment for that - 6 months? Do you know how many millions of dollars Spammers waste every year just by doing their "relatively innocuous" crimes? I'm not saying we should hang him or anything, but to me 10 years doesn't seem excessive for a white collar crime of this magnitude. I would offer him a deal though - stay offline for 10 years and only do a year in prison. If caught online for any purpose, back to the federal prison for 20 years...
If judges keep letting Spammers get off light, without ever setting a heavy-handed precedent, why would they ever even consider stopping the SPAM?? Sometimes a little scare is good.
"But this one goes to 11!"
You've hand-picked a combination of laws which are all either illegitimate (e.g. vice laws) or brand new (spamming, copyright) in order to make your point. I'm not impressed. It's only natural and proper that vice laws get flaunted (but even then, you'll observe that the fear of punishment has driven those activities indoors and underground). And copyright and spam laws are just barely on the books, and the police have no clue how to enforce them (but this will change).
It is far more relevant to consider whether prison is effective in the cases of laws which are generally agreed to be legitimate in all reasonable cultures: murder, arson, robbery, etc. etc. Does the prospect of prison time have a general deterrant effect?
I know that it has an effect on *me*. Were it not for the just punishment, there are some individuals whom I would have done mankind the service of removing from the planet.
FATMOUSE + YOU = FATMOUSE
If you don't think wrongdoing should be punished, then you are not a human being. Obviously you're a more evolved, emotionless, mature person who can take all sorts of suffering at the hands of criminal scum and just turn the other cheek. Or maybe you've just never been the victim of crime and are speaking from a perch.